Lady lawyers strategizing after Hobby Lobby

Today's longread: The Road Ahead: Gender Equality after Hobby Lobby (PDF) from The Alliance: State Advocates for Women's Rights & Gender Equality.

We offer this Report and state strategies agenda as a resource for allies in the movements for reproductive rights, health and justice, for LGBTQ equality, and for other progressive change across the country. We invite allies throughout the progressive community to join us in adapting and evolving these and other state strategies as we continue forging a powerful joint effort to combat gender discrimination in all its forms, and to protect women’s and LGBTQ rights, health and dignity -- now and into the future.

Local participant in the Alliance is the Women's Law Project.

Friday jukebox: Trask + Hubley

Good lord, I could watch Emily Hubley animation all day long:

And Osiris and the gods of the Nile
Gathered up a big storm
To blow a hurricane,
To scatter us away,
In a flood of wind and rain,
And a sea of tidal waves,
To wash us all away,
And if we don't behave
They'll cut us down again

I titled this screenshot "jeb wtf.png"

Putting this here because in November, 2016, we won't believe that a candidate for the Presidency actually said this and then thought it was a wise move to memorialize it the next day on social media.

One of the better reply Tweets notes that he's literally
standing on a pile of American corpses.

The other thing we won't believe Jeb Bush said was that he thought Margaret Thatcher should be on the American ten-dollar bill.

Ass or dumbass? Papal edition

Not sure if these people are assholes or just don't understand supply 'n' demand:

[Mark] Zajak and his wife, Kim, started out asking $16,000 for the whole week. They recently dropped the price to $14,000. They're willing to negotiate.

"I actually am disappointed," she said. "We haven't had anyone reply yet, so hopefully soon."

She wants to use the money to go on vacation in the Bahamas, but her dreams of the Atlantis Paradise Island Resort may not come true.

Or, as the kids say today, why not both?

GOP candidates treating Donald Trump as if he's a real candidate

Well, someone has to.

The best thing about the Donald Trump presidential candidacy is that all the other GOP candidates -- for lack of a better word, let's call them "serious" or "realistic" -- I say, all the other GOP candidates are actually responding to him, in public. Seen on CNN, just this morning:

Reince Priebus has phoned him personally.

George Pataki has invited him to a one-on-one debate on immigration.

Lindsey Graham spent time in comments to an international affairs think tank criticizing Trump and Hillary Clinton, as if they're both of the same caliber of candidate or as if Trump actually had some grown-up understanding of foreign policy.

Following a bouncing link, I see that Ted Cruz actually called Trump "terrific" the other day. I'm not sure if he meant that in sort of a modern, everyday way, like "really neat" or "the bee's knees" or "awesome," or if he was going for a more originalist meaning, like "inducing terror." But whichever meaning he intended to get across doesn't matter so much as why on god's green earth is he bothering to answer any question about Trump?

Another bouncing link shows me that Marco Rubio says that Trump's anti-Mexican comments are "offensive" and that Trump himself is "divisive." Whoa, Marco! Them's fightin' words! Let's cool it with the harsh language and try to be a little more polite next time, eh?

Every action they're taking to delegitimatize Trump only increases how seriously the media is taking him. "Amateur hour" is one term for it. The GOP clown car could not be more literally full of clowns, though at least one outlet is being realistic about the situation.

If you get rid of it, it'll still be there

If flying the Confederate battle flag is outlawed, then only outlaws will blah, blah, blah:

Once you have this neo-Confederate mentality at some level of your consciousness, I don’t really have to tell you how to vote or give you a position on some issue — you’ll have this idea already, it naturally comes out of your consciousness. Neo-Confederacy forms American consciousness.

[...]

I’m interested to see whether this current reaction against Confederate symbols lasts more than three months because they’re going to organize a counter reaction. Even if you get rid of the license plates and flags through legislation, the movement’s still going to be there. And people might go home thinking a victory has been won.

Maybe they could go full Philly dogwhistle and fly Irish flags or stick little shamrock symbols on their vehicles.

Friday jukebox: Harry and Henson

Today we found it:

The NSA is "drowning in information"

This article touches upon my thoughts about the vacuum cleaner that is NSA communications collection. That is, I'll buy that the NSA is collecting everything: phone calls, faxes, e-mails, text messages. I'll buy that the NSA has multiple storage locations around the U.S. where this mind-bogglingly vast amount of data is being stored. And I'll buy that they have some artificially intelligent search and analysis capacity, analagous to but even surpassing that of Google's often creepily accurate predictive typing feature, which draws out communications relevant to what they're looking for.

But it all comes down to the volume. The NSA isn't merely gathering all the haystacks in its search for needles, as the article suggests. It's gathering haystacks that are being delivered via firehoses. Via Niagara Falls. Sure, the NSA has a shop-vac that handles the volume, but how much analysis can they really do? Which raises two questions. One, how effectively can they find actual threats? And two, how much American privacy can they really violate?

So I've been and I continue to be ambivalent about the NSA's mass surveillance. On the one hand, I do strongly believe that the collection of cell phone signals via StingRay-type technology is a straightforward example of an unconstitutional search and seizure, a 21st-century general warrant. This is something we fought a war over and then abolished the use of in the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments. But on the other hand, I've always been a fan of "security by obscurity" -- you'd piss your pants laughing at me if I told you where I store all my computer passwords -- and I honestly don't see how the NSA can effectively catch the people whom it seeks to catch through this mass data collection. They're looking for a needle in a continent of haystacks. They're looking for a bubble in the foam going over Niagara Falls.

It's homeopathic policing!

Friday nickelodeon: young Lucas

javascript:void(0);

Or, as I like to call it, Alphaville USA.

Penna. State House Resolution honors terrorist

This guy was usually protesting on days that I escorted patients in and out of an abortion clinic. After handing little brown-colored plastic fetuses to young men of color who were helping their partners to the clinic, he would get into my face and actually threaten me with physical harm:

[S]tate House Resolution 82.

It honors John Patrick Stanton, of Jenkintown, as a "humanitarian, activist and founder of the prolife movement in this Commonwealth."

Stanton died in January 2014 at the age of 86.

The measure, sponsored by Montco Republican Rep. Thomas Murt, was voted out of the House Health Committee this week 18-9.

It was supported by all 16 Republican committee members and two Democrats: Philly Rep. Kevin Boyle; Luzerne County Rep. Gerald Mullery.

Stanton was known for demonstrating outside abortion clinics. His decades of doing so resulted in lawsuits, charges of harassment and trespassing, arrests and at least one incarceration.

So fuck you, Thomas Murt (R.-Montgomery County). Fuck you very much.

Lynne Abraham's favorite speech-muzzling law tossed

GWB appointee throws out the anti-Mumia "Silencing Act" on First Amendment grounds, because of course:

The Revictimization Relief Act, as it was called, "is the embodiment of content-based regulation of speech," [Judge Christopher] Conner wrote. "Its terms single out a distinct group and disincentivize its members from speaking."

[Also 5th Amendment grounds, particularly because the law didn't define "offender."]

"As a result, many plaintiffs -— prisoners and non-prisoners alike -— instantly modified their conduct for fear of falling within the ambit of the act," the judge said.

He said the law hinged on the emotional response of victims.

"Short of clairvoyance, plaintiffs cannot determine in advance whether and to what extent a particular expression will impact a victim's sensibilities," Conner wrote.

Minus one point for using the "word" disincentivize, but plus one for explaining that the law is no good because, as drafted (PDF), it required the speaker to be a mind-reader.

In January I noted how happy Lynne Abraham was to be present with Governor Corbett at the bill's signing into law. Would love to see someone ask her about the law now that a federal judge has ruled so predictably on it.

Your devices require and result in acres of radioactive clay

Keep upgrading your cell phone and laptop every year:

China’s dominance of the rare earth market is less about geology and far more about the country’s willingness to take an environmental hit that other nations shy away from. And there’s no better place to understand China’s true sacrifice than the shores of Baotou toxic lake.

Years ago I was chatting with someone who was very enthusiastic about hybrid automobiles, which at the time were only newly available in the U.S. An early adopter, enviro-weenie myself, I took my key fob out of my pocket and said something to the effect of, "OK, but look, here in this fob, from the petro-chemical plastic outer casing to the chip and battery inside, there is more environmental destruction than in a single Tin Lizzie. How many miles do I have to drive my Prius to make up in gasoline savings in order to offset the incredible amount of energy and resources that went into the battery pack, the dashboard computer display" -- this was pretty new at the time -- "and all the other technology and materials that went into it?"

Where do the two curves meet, I wonder: the energy and resources that go into a key fob, versus the energy and resources that go into a particular year and model of an American car? It's thoughts like these that keep me wound up and unable to sleep in the wee hours.

Voice in the wilderness, Indiana edition

In light of this week's clusterfuck in Indiana, I remind my readers of the proposal I offered nearly two years ago: The Indiana Church of Homo Matrimony:

You know what the state of Indiana needs? A church the only doctrine of which is same-sex marriage in the great State of Indiana. It should be called the Indiana Church of Homo Matrimony, and its greatest -- because only -- sacrament would be same-sex marriage.

So, Daily Beast? You're welcome.

Murderous and bizarro, part 2

My voice to god's ear? Three weeks ago I suggested that someone might start a disciplinary proceeding against the lawyer in California seeking to legalize extra-judicial killings of gay people, an astonishing abuse of California's direct democracy process. Today:

[T]he California Legislature's Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Caucus [has] filed a formal complaint against McLaughlin with the State Bar of California, asking that he be investigated.

So . . . keep an eye on Matthew McLaughlin's listing, I guess.

bisy backson

Spent all weekend and all day yesterday working, making Philadelphia safe for democracy, with nothing but a low-powered, only somewhat smartphone keeping me in touch with the world.

What did I miss, other than a plane crash in the French Alps?

Friday Jukebox: Harrison

Good one for a snowy vernal equinox.

Shane Bauer back in prison

Wow, one of the Iran hikers can't seem to stay away from prison:

On Friday night, sheriff’s deputies from Winn Parish, La., arrested reporter James West for trespassing at an area prison and discovered a camera-equipped drone among the reporter's belongings. And early this week, an employee of the prison resigned his position in the aftermath of the arrest and was called an "operative" of Mother Jones by Winn Parish Sheriff Cranford Jordan in a chat with the Erik Wemple Blog. "He was working as as guard," said Jordan.

Jordan identified the now-former prison employee as Shane Bauer, who is a senior reporter at Mother Jones, according to the magazine’s Web site.

Looks as though Bauer parlayed his experiences in Iran into a gig doing an exposé on Corrections Corporation of America for Mother Jones. I'm looking forward to the article.

Scene from a suburban Philadelphia courthouse, March, 2015

The scene: A large courtroom in the courthouse of a county in southeastern Pennsylvania. Large-scale portraits of recent-looking judges (some female but all white), apparently painted from photographs, line the room's walls. The case is a petition to set aside the nomination petition of a candidate for the office of commissioner in a mid-sized township. In other words, someone's trying to get a candidate kicked off the ballot for the primary election. Three COURT WORKERS stand between the JUDGE's bench and the parties. They are not sure what's going on -- it is Florida, 2000, writ small.

COURT WORKERS: "What's a petitoner? What's a respondent? We don't know where you should sit. Parties, just pick a table, any table."

ATTORNEY FOR PETITIONERS: "Your Honor, the law states that a candidate has to file Statement X with the Ethics Board and file a copy with the Board of Elections. The law further states that failure to file with the Ethics Board is a fatal defect to candidacy. Candidate filed only the latter. Therefore, her candidacy is fatally defective and she should be stricken from the ballot. Please issue an order to that effect."

CANDIDATE: "It's true I didn't file the statement with Ethics. But I'm disabled and I had to take my son to sportsball game and the notary had stepped out and the Party person said they'd take care of it. In fact, this lawyer should be representing me, not the petitioners, because the Party person didn't do what they promised."

ATTORNEY FOR PETITIONERS: "The law as written is unambiguous about the requirement. Also, Case Y from just 2 years ago in the state supreme court says that judges aren't allowed to make an exception when a candidate says they relied on someone to do something and it didn't happen. Please issue our order."

JUDGE: "Board of Elections, do you have anything to add?"

BOARD: "Nope."

JUDGE: "Sounds good to me. I'm not interested in getting overturned by Superior Court. Too bad, so sad, Candidate. Order issued as requested."

Fin

Holy shit, Moorestown (N.J.) declines to militarize its police

Unlike the NYPD, we finally have a police department that has come to its senses and realized that it doesn't actually need a mine-resistant vehicle to patrol its suburban and small-town streets:

The Moorestown Police Department on Thursday backed off its plans to acquire a mine-resistant vehicle from the federal government, citing concerns expressed by residents.

"It was more than we needed," Moorestown police Lt. Lee Lieber said. "The vehicle was more than we really needed as far as its capabilities."

The 1033 Program is ridiculous. No, it's not. It's not at all. It's a not-unreasonable way for the Department of Defense both to take in a little bit of cash and also to eliminate the ongoing cost of maintaining this equipment. What's does maintenance look like on a Navistar MaxxPro Dash? How about parts? You can't just head over to ACDelco or Pep Boys -- the closest source for Navistar vehicle parts is in York, Pennsylvania. (I tried to look at their spare parts catalog online to dig prices, but the document had been removed. Maybe you can find parts on EBay?)

I also wanted to find out how much one of these babies costs, but the DoD website specifically doesn't list them; instead, you have to establish a relationship with the program first. I'm really curious to know.

Why not make them here?

OK, I'll bite. Why are there no U.S. manufacturers of execution drugs?

Texas is down to its final dose of lethal injection drugs after the US state executed a man on Wednesday.

States across the country have seen their drug inventories dwindle after European manufacturers opposed to capital punishment have refused to sell the lethal concoctions.

Shouldn't the market be taking care of this shortage? What facts am I missing here?

"And, damn it all, they might have left me my toothbrush!"

The Odd Couple: The Americanized Huis Clos that found its ultimate expression in Bottom.

Discuss.

The rain it raineth every OH MY GOD KILL ME NOW

Readers, I give you the dourest production of Twelfth Night ever committed to videotape:

2011 law grad running for judge in Lehigh Valley

That is some ego, right there (also, one of so many, many reasons why judges should not be elected):

A 28-year-old Lower Saucon Township lawyer will challenge incumbent David Tidd for his position as district judge.

[ ... ]

[Amanda] Kurecian graduated from Bethlehem Catholic High School, Lehigh University and Drexel University Thomas R. Kline School of Law, according to her release. She now works as a divorce attorney at her own practice in Allentown, according to her firm's website. The Republican said she plans to cross-file for the race.

[Incumbent Judge David] Tidd, a bankruptcy court attorney, was first elected district judge in 2009. He plans to seek a second term.

The incumbent has been on the bench for about 6 years, which is longer than Kurecian has been practicing law. And Kurecian hasn't been at it even that long. The disciplinary board's website is down, so I can't check a primary source; but good old Avvo indicates she got her Pennsylvania license in 2011. That squares with her age of 28 and her Facebook birthday in May, 1986: on a traditional track she would have finished undergrad at 21 (2007) and law school at 24 (2011).

Her website is vague on her biographical details. It's not inaccurate or deceptive or even necessarily incomplete. But it leaves out details. It doesn't state when she finished law school. It doesn't state that she ever had a clerkship or worked with a firm with any prestige. Instead, it says that she "[worked] for other Lehigh Valley law firms for a number of years" until she hung her own shingle in 2013. So . . .  she picked up work here and there for two years (two being "a number") before scraping together enough cash to open up shop in some class B office space in Allentown.

Don't get me wrong. This is fine and it's not hugely different from my own experience. But does her four-year career track qualify her to be a judge?

Not sure if this candidacy is primarily an indicator of the need for merit selection in Pennsylvania, or an indicator of the glut in the market for lawyers. (Insert whynotboth.jpg here.) She never would have made it past a real screening committee if Pennsylvania had a real, merit-based process for putting qualified people on the bench. And there's an actual, real chance she'll be seated if she simply gets a good position on the ballot. With four years' experience out from a school that did not have a stellar first-time pass rate on the bar exam in 2011 (PDF).

But then, in 2011, Pennsylvania added 1,684 newly qualified lawyers to its already over-populated bar. If Kurecian draws a lucky ballot position, she could be getting herself a steadier paycheck than quite a few others in her cohort. Good for her.

San Francisco for visitors from the First World

There's a pile of gems in this piece, but if I had to pick a favorite, as a godless pinko commie I guess I'd have to go with:

The inequality will shock you and continue to shock you. Even if you're used to London. People who have lived in SF for a while become numb to it, often taking the poverty as a point of pride for the city. "At least they won't die out on the streets. Unlike other cities, we're much less heavy handed about using police to clear them out of the city". The californian liberalism is more of a passive agressive "fuck you, got mine".

H/T @sorenrags

Murderous and bizarro

I don't understand the bizarro focus, the murderous bizarro focus some people have on non-heterosexual behavior.

Seeing that it is better that offenders should die rather than that all of us should be killed by God’s just wrath against us for the folly of tolerating wickedness in our midst, the People of California wisely command, in the fear of God, that any person who willingly touches another person of the same gender for purposes of sexual gratification be put to death by bullets to the head or by any other convenient method.

That's text from a proposed ballot measure in California (PDF). It's not on the ballot yet; the proponent has just filed and paid the fee to be allowed to start gathering signatures.

The proponent is an attorney, one Matthew McLaughlin, so he should know better -- you can't magically make something constitutional simply by getting voters to pass it. This proposed measure comes about a decade after he attempted, but failed (PDF), to require public schools to provide KJV Bibles to students.

McLaughlin's previous initiative had the plausible opt-out that it was voluntary to use the provided Bibles. He failed anyway because it was so obviously an attempt to get the thin end of the Christian religion wedge into public schools, and voters saw through it early in the process. He never gathered enough signatures. So now . . .  McLaughlin is doubling down? With some full-bore extreme reaction against the ultimate demise of Prop 8, maybe?

Whatever it is, as I said when I started writing this, I don't get it. I don't get how one person starts with reading the term "abomination" in their religious text and then carries that through to attempting to get it legislated that gay people can be legally executed on the street. It's not laughable. It's sad and intriguingly scary. Perhaps at this point someone in California can institute some lawyer disciplinary proceeding against him for this move.

Poking around a white supremacist constitution so you don't have to

Following some bouncing links the other day (seriously, don't ask), I stumbled across the "Constitution" of the "Northwest American Republic," a proposed white supremacist nation seeking to establish itself somewhere in Cascadia and currently operating out of, I believe, Port Orchard, Washington. The draft constitution's bill of rights contains the expected conservative wackadoo provisions ("The right to life of unborn children, beginning at conception, shall be respected and enforced by the state"; "The right to keep and bear arms shall not be qualified or restricted by any requirement of licensing, registration, fee, taxation, restriction on transportation, or other such impediment"), a couple of unexpectedly progressive provisions ("All residents and citizens of the Republic shall have the right to adequate and life-preserving medical care, free of charge"; "All citizens and residents of the Republic shall enjoy the right, free of charge, to all such education, technical training, vocational training, and instruction as shall be within their innate personal capacity to understand, assimilate, and apply in life"), and at least one hilairiously qualified provision ("All residents and citizens of the Republic shall enjoy the right to complete freedom of speech, freedom of artistic and creative expression, and freedom of the press. (This article shall not be construed as limiting or interdicting the right of the government of the Republic or competent local authority to control or prohibit expressions of obscenity and/or pornography.)").

Though of course I don't agree with the understood policy behind this particular enumeration of rights, I get it. The drafters are looking to promote education among the populace and to keep people non-broke and healthy, both for the better functioning of the republic. They also want everyone to have as many guns as possible and ban abortions and likely a lot of forms of contraception as well, because they're conservative wackadoos. And they want people to be able to say the n-word but not the f-bomb, because they're racist conservative wackadoos.

Now, I'm a lawyer, so I poked around the constitution's sections relating to lawyering and the judiciary. Interestingly, strangely, and/or bizarrely, the constitution refers to a judiciary but there's no actual judicial branch of the national government. That is, there are executive and legislative branches of the government, but no third-arm judicial check on them. The policy here is stated clearly in the constitution itself: they don't dig so-called judicial activism ("The courts and judiciary shall have no governmental or policy-making role whatsoever within the State; these powers are reserved to the legislative and executive branches"). Again, policy I don't agree with, but I understand the mindset it's coming from.

But then then constitution goes full-on "let's kill all the lawyers":

No resident, citizen, or other person charged with a criminal offense before the courts of the Republic shall be denied the right to counsel and advocate of his choice, provided such counsel or advocate shall accept no fee, reward, emolument in money or kind, property or thing of value, officially or unofficially, for the performance of such function, and shall affirm such on oath before the commencement of trial or other proceeding.

Emolument is a term that means simply "payment" but sounds classy because it's used in the U.S. Constitution and also that sneaky Hillary "Benghazi Vince Foster Whitewater" Clinton has run afoul of the Emoluments Clause not once but twice. Twice! More like BENGHOLUMENTS, amirite?

That distraction aside, the constitution goes further elsewhere as well:

No citizen or resident of the Northwest American Republic may charge or accept any monetary emolument, fee, gift, or anything of value for performing any service connected with law, legal processes, trial or litigation, or for speaking in defense of a defendant in any legal case.

I'm killin' myself here trying to understand the policy behind this provision. Lawyers can't get paid? For any lawyering work? I mean, never mind how this mechanism goes beyond merely discouraging "frivolous" lawsuits and effectively shuts down the courts as a meaningful institution. But no paying for a will, a power of attorney, a business transaction? No hiring someone to do some sabre-rattling for you when your insurance company balks at paying out a claim? How about notarizing documents? Isn't notarizing a "service connected with law"?

How do they expect to fill their judges' benches? I mean, banning compensation for lawyers is a disincentive to become a lawyer. Or even if you do become a lawyer, then it's a disincentive to become an experienced lawyer. And isn't it best to have judges who come from the ranks of experienced trial lawyers?

The constitution appears to restrict the courts to trial-level tribunals. Is there no appeal system? Does this constitution de-activist the courts to such a degree that it gives a magistrate the final decision power of a court of last resort?

At least the constitution doesn't abolish the writ of habeas corpus.

Finally, most importantly, and the real reason for why we need to adopt the Northwest Front's constitution as America's new, improved constitution, and I mean truly above all else, is that it enshrines dueling as a civil right for male residents and citizens:

In order to instill and maintain the highest standards of personal courtesy, deliberation, maturity, integrity and courage in the manhood of the Republic, the State President in his capacity as chief magistrate shall establish and supervise a National Honor Court. The said body shall in turn create and enforce all necessary regulations, procedures, and protocols for the resolution of personal differences between individual male residents and citizens of the Republic, up to and including private combat by mutual consent, in accordance with the ancient and historic traditions and practices of the European family of nations.

Ancient and historic! Also Spielbergian:

If an arrestee yells "F--k the police!" in empty, rural Pennsylvania, does anyone hear him?

Here's a gem from the Court Summaries section of the most recent Pennsylvania Bar News:

Evidence insufficient for disorderly conduct conviction, unreasonable noise, 18 Pa.C.S. 5503(a)(2), when defendant yelled at police alongside rural highway out of hearing of any residential community or neighborhood and no evidence any member of public heard him.

Got that? The police stopped the defendant for something and among the charges filed were the "making an unreasonable noise" definition of disorderly conduct. And not only charged them with that, but won a conviction, even though the interaction took place in the middle of nowhere and nobody, outside of the participants, could have possibly heard the commotion.

The situation involved the defendant illegally dumping some trash. The rubbish included an American flag, so of course the charges also included a violation of Pennsylvania's wildly unconstitutional (but as yet unchallenged) anti-desecration law for good measure. During the arrest, defendant started yelling all kinds of ridiculous, insulting things at the cops. But, Superior Court writes, if a person yells ridiculous, insulting things in Outer Stickville, Pennsylvania, and nobody actually hears it, has he truly made a sound at all (PDF)?

So, cheers to Superior Court for properly tossing this conviction. That said, jeers to Superior Court for giving the police step-by-step instructions for how they should have properly charged the defendant instead (see Footnote 3).

On firing a client

Bah, had to fire a (completely insane, pill-popping, drama-tastic) pro bono client today. They had no-showed at three straight appointments without canceling beforehand.

During the phone call, they repeated, "I don't think you're being very fair," to which I answered, "I'm sorry you feel that way" and offered to give them the phone number of the agency that referred them. I'm good at being a broken record; they finally took the number and I gotta say I'm glad I won't be hearing that particular voicemail.

The client's mental illness played a part in their not making the appointments, and that's sad. I could have tried harder to remind them about the appointments, or maybe even travel to their home to get the case moving along. But I can't afford to keep clearing my calendar to deal with a client who may pop a Valium in the middle of a meeting and who appears to have given me a much rosier picture of their matter than it really is. Man, did they raise some red flags during our intake interview last year -- red flags that I was blessed to receive from the mentally ill person in my family of origin. So much drama. So many prescriptions. So many phone calls they made and answered while I was conducting the intake interview.

And now they're in my own phone's address book as "DO NOT ANSWER - document voicemail."

Just because a person suffers from a mental illness doesn't mean that the people they deal with aren't allowed to set boundaries. And maybe if the people they interact with regularly -- family, co-workers, friends -- set better boundaries more often, then they would be just a little bit better at managing their illness. I may be accused of not having enough sympathy for the mentally ill. (To which I'd say, well, since I grew up in it, I'm pretty damn tired of it. And so while I'm not afraid of it, I do try to minimize the amount of it I ever have to deal with any more.) But it was the client who told me that this matter was very, very urgent and wanted it wrapped up as quickly as possible  . . . and then skipped three appointments to get their case started in the courts. I'm very comfortable with showing this client the "three strikes, you're out" door.

"This makes them immune to the Jew."

Vice.com reads 8chan so you don't have to:

Over the last couple of months, a motley crew of white supremacists, Latvian lawyers, and fertile women have heeded the call [to establish a white people's homeland in Namibia], in a last-ditch effort to save white culture. They have launched a project to found a new nation on the principles of "European Heritage," "Western Values," and National Socialism in the largely black country in southern Africa.

The article is good for a laugh, and I'm glad the author screencaps so much, so that I don't have to sully my own internet connection by going to 8chan.

Friday jukebox: Queen

Twenty-five minutes of lunchtime entertainment:

Encore du mais soufflé S.V.P.

Pass the popcorn:

Le Conseil de Paris a donné son feu vert mercredi à une plainte en diffamation de la mairie de Paris, après la diffusion sur Fox News de propos selon lesquels la capitale abriterait des "no-go zones", des zones interdites où s'appliquerait la charia.

(On Wednesday, the city council of Paris gave the green light to the mayor's defamation lawsuit following a broadcast of remarks on Fox News, according to which the capital harbored so-called "no-go zones," forbidden areas where sharia law supposedly applies.)

The council vote wasn't unanimous, however. And one political leader declares that the lawsuit is making a mountain out of a molehill ("Il n'y a pas de quoi faire un fromage"). Another feels that the broadcast was "scandalous, malicious, and not a little ridiculous," but that the lawsuit looks more like a PR stunt on the part of mayor Anne Hidalgo, not "a useful operation for Parisians." Hidalgo has countered that even though the broadcast was risible, Fox News's claims of 750 no-go zones and the "improbable" map used to illustrate them are legally actionable lies because they were "insulting" and "prejudicial."

Bisy backson

Nothing like a few days' worth of meetings to keep me away from blogging.

Charging what I'm worth

Man, there's nothing like hearing, "Oh, yeah, listen, that's a little more than I was expecting to have to pay" when you quote your billing rate to someone whose own rate probably exceeds three times yours.

Christ on a cracker.

Not sure if it was that my degree is from a "bottom 90%" law school, or that my law license is only 5 years old. Or maybe it's something else -- I do see that the nature of the work that was sent to me was more copyediting than lawyering, but I'm a lawyer, so I charge a lawyering rate for my work.

Period.

If you want to pay legal assistant rates, then hire a legal assistant, not a lawyer. I'm actually not that expensive, as far as lawyers go. I know what local BigLaw attorneys make, attorneys who graduated the same year or so that I did. I charge less than that, because, hey, I don't keep myself in Armani suits and a Class A office space. We all got bills to pay, though, and we're all allowed to charge what we're worth.

Friday jukebox: Chet Atkins

Effortless:

Chatfield on adjuncting

My pal David Chatfield is an adjunct professor of art with a Catch-22. One of his school employers requires that he hold office hours, but only recently gave him an actual office to hold them in. The office, though, is essentially a storage closet for another academic department. His
response:

[D]o not call us adjunct. The word means "something added to another thing but not essential to it." We are absolutely essential.

And do not call us contingent. The word contingency means "a provision for an unforeseen event or circumstance." In other words, Plan B.

Increasingly, we are Plan A. We are the majority of higher ed teachers and yet are treated like we are still Plan B.

More.

Report that Islamic State is going medieval on kids

It reads like propaganda:

Islamic State militants are selling abducted Iraqi children at markets as sex slaves, and killing other youth, including by crucifixion or burying them alive, a United Nations watchdog said on Wednesday.

[ ... ]

"We have had reports of children, especially children who are mentally challenged, who have been used as suicide bombers, most probably without them even understanding," [Renate] Winter told Reuters. "There was a video placed (online) that showed children at a very young age, approximately eight years of age and younger, to be trained already to become child soldiers."

[ ... ]

"Children of minorities have been captured in many places... sold in the market place with tags, price tags on them, they have been sold as slaves," Winter said, giving no details.

This sounds so unreal. And it comes a day or so after a former CIA deputy director told the media that NATO will need 100,000 troops "into Iraq and possibly into Syria" to deal with Islamic State.

And Fox News is helping by posting the entire video of the Jordanian pilot whom IS burned alive in a cage (no, I won't link to it).

Maybe IS has some yellowcake uranium, too.

"Revelations told me so; therefore, First Amendment"

One of these guys:

A Christian Fundamentalist who suspects Social Security numbers are the "mark of the beast" cannot sue for religious discrimination after he lost an internship over his beliefs, [the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals] ruled (PDF).

As a volunteer reviewing attorney for a legal services nonprofit, I help screen incoming complaints from people who believe their legal rights have been stomped on. We got one of these "Revelations told me so; therefore First Amendment" knuckleheads the other day. I had the office volunteer send them a letter referring them to the Alliance Defense FundDefending Freedom. The note I left in the complainant's database record ran something along the lines of, "The right-wing Christian fundamentalist lawyers created this; let 'em deal with it."

Hillary Clinton won't announce for months

You people who think that Hillary Clinton will announce her campaign for the presidency any time before, like, late July are so funny. Why on god's green earth would she not maximize the amount of time permitting the various dumbass GOP candidates to say and do the most incredible things?

What would Chris Christie have said about vaccinations if Clinton were in the race already?

Would Mitt Romney have dropped out?

Would Sarah Palin have hired a speechwriter (or "teleprompter repairperson")?

Let's stay hunkered down during these winter cold snaps, wait for spring to come and go, and tune back in after the 4th of July -- and let Clinton hang with her granddaughter. The longer she stays out of the race, the more hilarious stories she can tell her about these GOP knuckleheads.

Holy shit, the NYPD is about to go full military

Anti-terror strike force!

Police Commissioner Bill Bratton announced Thursday that the NYPD is establishing a new anti-terror strike force.

The unit of 350 cops will be specially trained in high-tech weaponry to deal with protests, "lone wolf" attacks and evolving threats posed by terrorists, CBS2's Marcia Kramer reported.

The Strategic Response Group, Bratton said, will be dedicated to "disorder control and counterterrorism protection capabilities."

"Disorder control"? Rifles and machine guns to control mass protests?

This is what democracy looks like!

Incredible number of homeless kids in NYC

New York City is housing its homeless in sub-code "cluster units," decrepit apartments managed by real estate ventures taking hundreds of millions of dollars in payments from the city to shelter people with collapsing ceilings and exposed rat poison:

By mid-December, the homeless census reached a record 59,068 — nearly the population of Utica, city records show. The Coalition for the Homeless says it peaked even higher at 60,352.

The homeless count, according to the city and the coalition, includes 25,000 children. And it represents a 10% jump from the 53,615 in shelters on de Blasio’s Inauguration Day.

So. Buildings that are sub-code and wouldn't pass inspection, so let's put homeless kids in there so they can ingest lead paint dust while they're shivering because there's no heat.

Also? Fuck the Daily News for using a woman of color with 11 kids as the example for this article; a quick glance at the comments section will show what actual message the article got across. But she's not homeless because she has 11 kids at home. She's homeless because the rent is too damn high (PDF). And her kids are just a few of the 25,000 that are homeless now, up from 22,712 in January 2014. Note that the Daily News doesn't pretend to say that her family is typical of the families in these deathtrap apartments. Nope, she's just a good poster child, like this Clinton welfare reform-era golden oldie:

Bronx Defenders blow it

So much poor decisionmaking:

Attorneys at a New York City public defenders’ office participated in an online video that advocated the killing of police officers, featuring the lyrics "time to start killing these coppers," a city investigation disclosed on Thursday.

[ ... ]

Two attorneys with the Bronx Defenders, a city-funded legal service organization, appear in the anti-police video, some of which was filmed at the Bronx office, according to the New York City Department of Investigation report.

The Bronx Defenders posted a message on its website saying it "abhors the use of violence against the police."

"The Bronx Defenders never approved the music video 'Hands Up,' and never saw it before it went online," it said. "We deeply regret any involvement with this video."

Credits at the end of the video cite the Bronx Defenders as its sponsor.

The establishment is commenting with the type of hyperbole you'd expect, though there's no proof yet that, you know, the head of the Defenders personally wrote, starred in, directed, and produced the video. The filmmakers can put whatever they want in the credits, and it's not necessarily an accurate representation of the amount of "sponsorship" the Defenders actually gave them. The Defenders have quite a lot of plausible deniability, actually, that the video was done guerrilla-style and didn't really involve them at all. Except . . . 

The report also said the Bronx Defenders’ executive director, Robin Steinberg, failed to discipline staff members after learning about the video and made misleading statements to officials about their involvement.

In an alternate universe where Steinberg had done the right thing, the attorneys who appeared in the video and anyone who helped arrange the production at the Defenders office, for crying out loud, would have been out on the street. I'm wary about what kinds of statements the report describes as "misleading," as opposed to, say, "unresponsive" or just "unhelpful"; but in any event, "deeply regret" doesn't come close to what Steinberg should have done. Way to blow the office's credibility. This is a real shame.

The sound of one invisible hand clapping in Georgia

Georgia implemented a pile of right-to-work, anti-immigrant legislation, and now the invisible hand is smacking employers:

The work here can be physically demanding. Not a lot of people want to do it -- even though the average wage here is $16 per hour plus benefits.

Tom Hensley, the company president, says Fieldale Farms hires just about anyone who can pass a drug test.

"We hire 100 people a week. Because we have 100 people who quit every week, out of 5,000 employees," he says. "We're constantly short."

I'm no economist, but I do understand that supply 'n' demand works both ways. An employer who just can't get good help these days is an employer who's not paying wages that are high enough for good help. Sixteen an hour plus benefits is not a high wage -- you're looking to take home only some $11 or $12 after taxes. And it'll disqualify you from food stamps and other benefits.

"So we've had to hire middle-aged Americans who have not been used to working in an industrial facility and they have difficulty keeping up with the machines. So it's not the same labor force that we had 10 years ago," Hensley says.

So slow down the machines and pay the workers a respectful wage, a wage that "middle-aged" people, who probably have dependents at home as well, can actually live on.

Friday jukebox: Mudhoney

La, la, la!

News from confirmed bachelor Lindsey Graham

Confirmed bachelor Lindsey Graham has a hat, and he's not afraid to throw it into the ring:

Graham formed a committee called "Security Through Strength," which allows him to raise money to fund travel around the country to gauge support for a candidacy.

[ . . . ]

Graham's organization is headed by David Wilkins, a former U.S. ambassador to Canada under President George W. Bush and a former speaker of the South Carolina House of Representatives.

Now, far be it from me to tell anyone that they should get married -- it'll take me some convincing to ever go down that road again, myself, that's for sure -- and it's absolutely none of my goddamned business what Graham does when he's not on the job. The point, of course, is that it shouldn't matter. But because it does, and because he's a war hawk who was never a combat veteran, and because he voted for Clinton's DOMA, and because he thinks Justice Alito is a "decent" man, it does.

Twenty percent of American kids are on food stamps

What the fuck, people:

The number of children in the United States relying on food stamps for a meal spiked to 16 million last year, according federal data, signaling a lopsided economic recovery in which lower income families are still lagging behind.

Christ, I can't imagine trying to feed my household for under $100 per week. That seems like a perfectly adequate figure until you get to the grocery store and see what SNAP doesn't pay for, or you don't have adequate storage at home, or your baby grows into a teenager whose "mealtimes" kind of last all day long.

Since my divorce about 10 years ago, I've been raising my kid as what I like to call "pretend middle class." I don't qualify for food stamps because -- horrors -- I have a tiny bit of retirement savings for myself and a tinier college fund for Glomarization, Jr. Cashing those funds out and spending them down to zero would have been a prerequisite to getting some $340 per month.

Now, at this point I have household budgeting down to a science and can feed the two of us for under $5 per day. But I'm also intelligent (if I do say so myself) and educated. And I've had some resources, including credit cards, a helpful personal network, and the ability to work from home. So I can save serious money by making my own bread, buying in bulk (a strategy that the seriously destitute cannot use), and preparing things ahead of time. If you don't have the resources I have, though, you can't pressure-can vegetables in the summer for convenience meals in the winter, because a pressure canner costs $200.00, not to mention the cost of canning jars and a bulk purchase of soup vegetables. If you move frequently because you don't own your home, then what are you going to do with a chest freezer full of food? But I'll stop, since other people have written a lot more eloquently than I ever could about how you can't make and save money unless you have some to start with; here's a recent piece.

Speaking of people who write better than I can on the subject, whatever happened to Cracked.com's John Cheese? He disappeared from Twitter and I haven't seen him write anything new on Cracked for several months now.

Still Calling

Yay! Brendan's back!

Protesting at SCOTUS is very dramatic

As the video begins, one of the protesters can be heard shouting, "One person, one vote!"

"Money is not speech -- separate wealth and state," yells another.

"We are the 99 percent," shouts another.

Protesting at the Supreme Court is very dramatic and draws attention, I guess. But the Court can rule only on the laws that get passed and challenged. You get more change for your protesting buck by going after the lawmakers, not the judges.

By which I mean, actually contacting lawmakers in a meaningful way. Whining on social media or scribbling a blog post is not meaningful. You have to send them actual letters or faxes (insert condescending joke about fax machines being obsolete here), or at the very least phone their office.

Don't like Citizens United? Tell your members of Congress to fix the law. Upset about the CIA torture report? Remind Congress that it is the job of the legislative branch to check the executive, and they can rein in the CIA as they see fit.

I feel like this is American Constitutional Democracy 101. Don't people take civics classes in school any more? Do people feel so disenfranchised and desperate that they'll try something so ultimately ineffectual as smuggling cameras into the Supreme Court, making a fuss, getting arrested, and posting the video with a snappy little logo? What a waste of resources. Better to print up a few reams of letterhead with the logo and send letters to Congress.

Friday jukebox: Robert Palmer

I'm such a sucker for blue-eyed soul:

Recent reading, online and on paper: AMUSEMENT IS CONTROL

The Dissolve's most recent Movie of the Week was Back to the Future, which dropped like a bomb on me in 1985. I was at an age where I couldn't drive a car but I could be driven crazy by a teenage crush on a Hollywood sitcom star. I wasn't old enough to see an R-rated movie but I was old enough to be let loose in the mall without parental chaperoning. I had no personal experience of the 1950s but my parents sure spent a lot of time there. I identified with the oddball, loner-ish nature of both Marty and his dad; and I've always been a sucker for decently written science fiction, even if it's written as a comedy. The Dissolve's last essay over-thinks the films, in my opinion; but the Forum discussion was an enjoyable back-and-forth between a couple of critics who (I think) are just a little younger than I am.

A recent thrift shop find, Prof. Amos N. Guiora's Fundamentals of Counterterrorism would be better titled "Fundamentals of Justifying Your Pre-emptive Strike to the United Nations." After 130+ pages in that vein, though, the last section does present some strongly worded urgencies about protecting people's civil liberties in the face of known unknowns. While with a publishing date of 2008 it's a little behind the times, it offers an interesting view into the mindset of the people who are at the highest levels of responsibility for anti-terrorism decisionmaking.

Also picked up a copy of Frank Meeink's memoir Autobiography of a Recovering Skinhead. Pretty harrowing stuff, and I continue to wonder about the links between childhood abandonment and trauma, and addiction -- whether to substances or hate or whatever.

Finally, a treat came into the house: Don Hertzfeldt's The End of the World. Now, I'm a huge fan of Hertzfeldt's animation; he's arguably America's best living animator, using a technique, refined yet unchanged since 1995, that looks deliberately unsophisticated to deliver sophisticatedly multi-layered messages. (Er, the messages have improved since 1995; see, e.g., It's Such a Beautiful Day, a must-view on Netflix streaming right now.) I remember seeing Billy's Balloon way back in my "film festivals are a full-contact sport for me" days, and I've always been excited to see his new work as it comes out. This book, however . . .  it's got the Hertzfeldt non-sequiturs. It's got his pervasive existential doom (it is literally about the end of the world). It's got the horrific, the sublime, the sudden cut-to-black -- except it hasn't, right? Because it's not a film, it's a book. Really it's a bound storyboard. And I guess it's a fine storyboard; but I think Hertzfeldt's profundity comes in the pacing and repeated juxtapositions of images in his films, not in the images themselves. The images, as I say, have a deliberately unsophisticated design to them. Taking them out of the context of a motion picture -- films being like an artistic mathematics of images over time -- seriously diminishes Hertzfeldt's ability to effectively and fully get across his challenging and scary themes.

There was a joke list in The End of the World of about a dozen of the author's "other works." While I'll never get tired of Hertzfeldt's not-really non-sequiturs, I do wonder if the "other works" are just a list of notes for another storyboard.

All this to say, however -- I'm damned disappointed that I'm not at Sundance right now, body-checking the crowd for a seat at the premiere of World of Tomorrow tonight. Bah!

City of Paris v. Fox News?

In France it's actually illegal to insult someone's honor -- it's one of those "foreign" things understood in the term foreign country, such as not having a "First Amendment" -- and the mayor of the City of Paris is none too happy with the "no-go zones" lie that Fox News came up with last week. She's threatening to sue.

Ah . . . so that's why Fox News actually apologized, seriously and literally apologized, on Saturday for making the claims.

Here's a fun fact. The last time in France when someone felt his honor was insulted, and so he challenged the speaker to a duel, with swords? That would be in 1967. Newsreel:



During a debate in the National Assembly one day, Socialist politician Gaston Deferre tossed an insult at Gaullist René Ribière; the latter answered by saying, "Let's take that outside, jerk." And they fought with epées until Ribière lost.

French people take insults seriously, and there's no constitutional protection for running your mouth, making shit up, and otherwise acting like a verbal jackass. So, in a sword fight between national security pundit Steve "Muslim empire" Emerson and the mayor of the City of Paris, Anne "it's about time we were done with Scientology" Hidalgo. Who do we like?

Prayer in schools, prayer here in September

I swear, kids in actual religious schools can get less churchin' than what kids in public schools encounter any more:

Another student, Kyle, says that the influence of religion isn't restricted to football. Kyle, who is Jewish, played on the baseball team for two years. His teammates said Christian prayers before every game. "I just said the prayers to go along with everybody," Kyle adds with an uncertain shrug. "You don’t want to be, you know, that guy."

I think I have a vague memory of our class having to say grace before lunch, circa 1977. But by the time I was 9 or 10 it was all strictly a "moment of silence" after the Pledge of Allegiance in the morning. Oh, and there was that history teacher in high school who was a young-earth creationist, but whatever -- the school year is a limited timeframe, so who cares if we start the class timeline only within some certain date of recorded history?

It's bizarro to me, the evangelical Protestant need to be constantly witnessing, this all-Jesus, all the time thing. Praying before a school assembly, praying before a basketball game, praying at the school's flagpole. Wishing someone a blessed day instead of a merely good one. Saying an endless, extemporized prayer at a meal instead of reciting a short but meaningful, if formulaic, blessing.

In the end I guess I'm always brought around again to Matthew 6:5-8. It fascinates me that many constant-prayer evangelicals are biblical literalists, but it doesn't even take a literal interpretation of that passage to see that this kind of thing isn't allowed.

In other news, the pope is coming! The pope is coming! Last time this happened, the city built a platform for Mass, left it up for a week for people to gawk at, and lost a pretty embarrassing case in the Third Circuit (PDF). The best, because so quietly understated, line from the appellate opinion: "The City thus created a temporary shrine. Such activity is not compatible with the Constitution." Gilfillan v. City of Philadelphia, 637 F. 2d 924, 931. But late September can mean some wonderful weather here in the city, great weather for another outdoor Mass. It'll be interesting to see if the city tries shenanigans again to pay for it.

Christian governor Bobby Jindal continues to bear false witness about "no-go" zones

This is so utterly stupid. But why in christ's name do news outlets give people who call themselves Christians such a huge pass when they're caught in an obvious and plain lie?

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal on Monday stood by his criticism of so-called "no-go" zones in Europe, where sovereign nations allegedly cede authority to Muslim immigrants, a controversial idea that many critics say is overblown.

No-go zones are a lie. Lie, lie, lie, lie, lie. Governor Jindal is a liar and he even doubled down in that interview by saying he's "speaking truth."

In fact, he's a Catholic breaking the 8th Commandment. Won't somebody please, please call this out?

Friday jukebox: YDI

Philadelphia hardcore.



There's a re-release party for "A Place in the Sun" at Boot & Saddle on Saturday 14 February.

Mayoral candidate Nelson Diaz has officially announced his candidacy

Diaz, head bowed during opening prayer. #diaz2015 pic.twitter.com/WXpJ2kfVaE

— Joel Mathis (@joelmmathis) January 15, 2015

The fuck? Is he a candidate for mayor or for bishop? The city needs a public administrator, not a cleric, in City Hall.

ICYMI: Stuff I wrote about France a while ago

A little over 4 years ago, I wrote up an analysis of the French burka [1] ban. Please see Part 1 and Part 2 for some background on how racism and religiosity are different in France than they are in the U.S. -- as I said to a friend of mine recently, it's as if the word foreign in the term foreign country is there for a reason.

---

[1] I say "burka" because the law is generally known as the "burka ban," even though the term is not accurate, yes, I know, Noz. The French law bans all attire that aims to cover the face, which certainly includes burkas, but also includes niqabs (veils).

American renounces being American, can't believe he's being treated like non-American

Someone just learned that if you move out of the U.S. and formally, legally renounce your U.S. citizenship, that means you become a non-citizen. And when you're a non-citizen, no matter what your previous citizenship or how much money you made from Bitcoin, you have to go through the visa process when you want to enter the U.S. D'oh!

Roger Ver is a citizen of Saint Kitts and Nevis since he said the magic words, paid the fee, and turned in his passport a little under a year ago. Which made him a non-citizen, period. Did he think that being born in the U.S. would put him in some kind of special category of non-citizenship? Sorry, dude. Every non-citizen who wants to enter the U.S. for a short trip like the one Ver contemplated must apply for a B-1 or B-2 visa, and the government can pretty much turn you down whenever it wants to, for whatever reason it wants to.

This is one of the prices you pay when you choose to renounce your U.S. citizenship. Bizarrely, it means you choose to be treated the way the U.S. treats everyone else in the world who isn't a U.S. citizen. What a maroon.

Will the invisible hand slap some sense into anti-vaxxers?

It was only a matter of time:

California has confirmed more cases of measles in people who visited Disneyland or its adjacent California Adventure park last month, health officials said on Monday, raising the number of infected people to 26.

Public schools have had a devil of a time with the anti-vax crowd, since they have to allow religious or "religious" exemptions to some degree or another. But private landowners? Not so much.

It would be perfectly legal for Disney to deny entry to customers whose vaccinations aren't up to date. Maybe what will bring down anti-vaxxing won't be public health information initiatives (though that seems to be working very well in Australia), but will be commercial entities like Disney. Imagine having to show proof of vaccination before your kids are allowed into Disneyland. Score one for the invisible hand!

Philly mayoral candidate list round-up

Darrell Clarke is out. So the ballot for the Democratic primary is starting to look like this:

• MOVE warrant-signing judge, drug warrior, and Governor Corbett fan Lynne Abraham
  
• Nelson Diaz, former judge of the Court of Common Pleas
  
• Doug Oliver (probably), former spokesperson for PGW
  
• Ken Trujillo, former City Solicitor
  
• State Sen. Anthony H. Williams

A bit of a rogue's gallery. I got nothin', except that I'm not sure how a public utility flak could be considered qualified. I mean, what qualifies a person for mayor, right? But I'd tend to think that "Mayor of a City of 1.5 Million" shouldn't be someone's very first experience in politics.

EDITED TO ADD: I hear there's a shoe running.

Friday jukebox: BLOOD OF THE LAMB

For some reason, I'm a real sucker for Protestant hymns. Raised Catholic, I don't ever hear them, really, unless I'm at a funeral. And I tend to get just two types of funerals. Either it's a full Catholic Mass with an organ and Communion and "On Eagle's Wings"; or it's funeral home-y and secular-ish with piped-in music. The last time I heard a pastor urging us to pray for the Lord to abide with us in our sorrow was quite a few funerals ago. But what's a serious funeral without a pastor asking you where you'll spend eternity? Here, let's meet beyond the river and get us some churchin' this fine day:



The poetry is naive, the lyrics are grisly, and the tunes are catchy. I'm torn between "What else could you want?" and "How much more American can you get?"

Lynne Abraham hates the First Amendment

I'm so old, I remember when Lynne Abraham, who was definitely not yet running for mayor at the time, came out to support Governor Corbett's signing of the Revictimization Relief Act back in October. Here's a screengrab from a video embedded in the article:

Video is via ScrappleTV.

This is a terrible law that violates the First Amendment on its face. It won't survive the court challenges, whether the first one filed by baby lawyers in November or the one filed by ACLU today (PDF). Governor Corbett's last-ditch attempt at winning re-election got him nothing but a few points from the people who are still insane about Mumia Abu-Jamal -- a broken man who will die in prison, probably within just a few more years -- and maybe some glee at sticking the incoming Wolf administration with paying to defend the lawsuits.

England vs. U.S. in homelessness stats

Followed some bouncing links today and landed on this one. I was wondering how the numbers of homeless differ between the U.K. and the U.S. Some definitions to sort through, first. The U.K. counts a number of conditions as "homelessness," which includes couch-surfing and a status called "statutorily homeless," which is a category for people who have applied for government-provided housing. The term in the U.K. for the dire condition of sleeping on the street is "sleeping rough." On our part, in the U.S. we don't count applications for subsidized housing as a category of the homeless. And our term for sleeping rough is "living in unsheltered locations."

So on to the numbers. In Autumn, 2013, the U.K. government counted/estimated 2,414 individuals "sleeping rough" throughout England (PDF). (The URL says ".uk" but the document says "England.") This is out of a population (England-only) of 53.9 million.

In January, 2013, the U.S. government estimated 215,344 "living in unsheltered locations" throughout the country (PDF). And our population is 316.1 million.

So the population of the U.S. is about 5.8 times that of England -- but the number of sleeping rough doesn't scale up at the same rate. Food for thought: why doesn't England have 14,157 people sleeping on streets, in parks, under bridges?

Anyway, Code Blue in Philadelphia tonight. I think everyone knows to call 911 if you see someone needing assistance, particularly since Hub of Hope has been kicked out of Suburban Station.

McCain's decision: D-Day 2015, or turn the Champs Elysees into a glass parking lot?

. . . and John McCain's response to the Charlie Hebdo massacre is, essentially, "Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb-bomb Par-ee":

"We knew for a long time about the areas outside Paris that police don't go into at night," said Arizona Senator John McCain. "We know there's a strong Islamic influence there, radical Islam. We know there are many French who are fighting in Syria."

H/T Zaid Jilani on Twitter (@ZaidJilani).

Religion vs. science, again

Religion kills journalists (BBC).

Science kills disease-causing bacteria (BBC).

H/T Victor Stenger ("Science flies you to the moon. Religion flies you into buildings").

Lynne Abraham still buys into marijuana hysteria

Chris Goldstein at philly.com's Philly420 blog does some math on Lynne "Drug Warrior" Abraham:

"I absolutely, totally disagree that our jails are filled with people who are low-level marijuana possessors," she said.

Not true. Going back to the UCRS data from 2005-2009, when Abraham was D.A., there were 19,766 adults arrested for less than 30 grams of cannabis. That is an average of 13 people per day. Every single one was put into handcuffs and put into a Philadelphia holding cell. Before the SAM program was instituted in 2010 by Seth Williams, every one of these adults also had to make bail and many couldn't. That meant they could spend up to 48 to 72 (or more) hours in jail before arraignment. Then all of these offenders were brought into criminal court. Most were convicted and ended up with life-damaging permanent records.

So, in a nutshell, when Lynne was D.A., city jails had plenty of marijuana smokers taking up space, time and city resources. If she is so proud of taking a hard line against weed, why dissemble about throwing cannabis consumers in jail?

Abraham is out of touch and would roll back evidence-based policies that have started to ease overcrowding in city jails and criminal court dockets.

Title card from Lynne Abraham's favorite drug-enforcement policy educational film.

Meet our next mayor: MOVE arrest warrant Judge Lynne Abraham

. . . and here's Lynne Abraham ducking softball questions, and apparently still believing that marijuana is a gateway drug, on her road to the Mayor's office.

I mean, we're all aware she'll be our next mayor, right? Nobody else's name on the ballot is recognizable, and nobody actually votes in the primary, where Philadelphia actually elects its mayor since the Democratic candidate tipped in May will trounce the Republican in November.

In related news, Jason Osder's 2013 documentary film about the MOVE bombing, Let the Fire Burn, is on Netflix. You should see it; it's all archive footage, no re-enactments, no narration, just layin' it out there for the audience to draw its own conclusions from the materials presented.

Why is this related news?

I should verify with the archive over at Temple University, but word on the street is that it was Judge Lynne Abraham who signed D.A. Ed Rendell's arrest warrants, which the police took to the MOVE house on 13 May 1985 in order to serve -- leading to the 14 May bombing and subsequent fire that killed 11 people (half of them kids) and burned five dozen homes to the ground.

Some years ago, the local anarchist bookstore briefly had a few t-shirts for sale with a poster-ized treatment of this image on it. The title of the image was "Welcome to Philadelphia." I think I prefer "This was Plan B."

The mayoral primary will take place on 19 May 2015, which is 30 years plus five days after the MOVE bombing. Philadelphia memories aren't short, so I do wonder if anyone will be brave enough to ask Lynne Abraham her thoughts on having signed those warrants. She states in the Philadelphia Magazine interview up there, "I don't know why the police were not indicted in the [Staten] Island matter." Maybe she could be asked if she understands why the police were not indicted in the MOVE matter, either.

Or maybe all journalists are Chuck Todd.

Someone is wrong on the Internet about Philadelphia taxicabs

I keep hearing people complain about Philadelphia taxis and how Uber and Lyft would solve all our problems. One of the more frequent complaints is about how those greedy taxi drivers resist taking credit cards, and why won't they enter the 21st century?

Well, they resist taking cards because there's only one credit card merchant vendor that the Parking Authority contracts with; and then the Parking Authority requires drivers themselves, not the cab companies, to pay the non-negotiable 5% fee on all credit card transactions. This after they have to pay their daily car rental and gas means that they can work a 12-hour shift and bring home under $100/day before income and city wage taxes. Philadelphia taxi operators are in a terrible situation that's mostly out of their control because the Parking Authority needs a little deregulation, or better regulation (but not abolition in favor of tech operators, who don't like to pick up people with disabilities and have proven to have a little bit of a problem with sexually assaulting their female ridership).

It's comparable to that thing that restaurant servers like to say: if you can afford to eat out, you an afford to tip decently. Likewise, if you can afford a $15 car ride home, you can afford a $22 car ride home -- without Uber. I guess on my part I don't see any hardship in adding "keep cab fare + 50% in cash in my pocket at the end of the night" to an evening activity's budget, so that a cab driver can take a little more dough back home to his kids.